High-tech parking brings in the money

It also guides drivers to empty spots, makes it easy to pay

Feb. 22, 2013

Written by

Jane Prendergast

Check out what it might be like to use the proposed system

Xerox uses three apps to help parkers: • Parker is a smartphone app by www.streetline.com. • ParkMe is a smartphone and web app by www.ParkMe.com. Parker and ParkMe are both used in Los Angeles. In Indianapolis, people use Parker. • Parkmobile is an app that allows you to pay by phone. Read about it at www.parkmobile.com.

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The very first day a parking meter that takes credit cards is installed, it makes 30 percent more than the coin meter it replaced because people tend to buy the maximum time just to be safe.

That’s all you need to know about why an industry giant like Xerox might want to bring expensive technology to Cincinnati’s parking meters: The better the technology, the more efficient the system, the more money the system makes.

Within months, Cincinnati drivers would find meters all over the city that take credit cards, not just in Downtown like now. Those meters would work virtually all the time because the technology reports mechanical problems in real time. Now, meters might stay broken for “days and days,” City Manager Milton Dohoney Jr. said, losing money all the while.

After all the city’s meters are upgraded to take credit cards, these other improvements would start:

• Paying the meter with your smartphone, which would then text you when you have 10 minutes left on the meter. If you want to stay parked longer, you can add more minutes over the phone.

• Sensors would be bored into some parking spaces to detect metal. When a car crosses over a sensor, the system would tell smartphone apps that space was taken. The apps would point drivers to open spaces. The sensors look like hockey pucks and are flush with the pavement, said David Cummins, Xerox’s senior vice president and managing director for parking and justice solutions. They would go in higher-density areas.

• Drivers could find available parking spaces in other, less dense areas of the city via software that uses historical parking data and estimates to project how many spaces are available.

Parking has long been a lucrative thing for companies like Xerox, with the money to develop technology and offer it to governments. It was 30 years ago that Washington, D.C., couldn’t afford new coin meters and worked a deal with Lockheed Martin to buy them, Cummins said.

“This is an industry that had been largely overlooked by technology, partly neglected by technology innovators,” he said. “But in the last five years, it has really taken off.”

Here’s what he sees 10 years out: a system, using your phone and maybe license plate readers, that would track how long you parked and send you a monthly bill.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to do a meter transaction at all?”

Dohoney’s proposal would lease most of the city’s parking system to the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority, which would oversee a team of operators, including Xerox. The investment firm Guggenheim would buy the bonds to generate $92 million up front for the city and an estimated $3 million annually.

The list of things he proposes to spend that $92 million on: a 30-story Downtown residential building with a grocery store; money to fill future deficits; more for the city’s troubled pension system; a carousel at Smale Riverfront Park; money to speed up the new interchange at Interstate 71 at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive; and a bike trail along Wasson Way.

Supporters love the plan, saying it’s a great way to generate new revenue and pay for some big-ticket projects while not selling off the parking assets. Opponents think the city shouldn’t cede control and that the projects don’t benefit all neighborhoods fairly.

Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard on Thursday touted his city’s lease with Xerox, saying the city netted $2.5 million in 2012, the second year of its lease. That’s up $1 million from 2011, but not the $3.1 million the city projected, according to The Indianapolis Star. Ballard said it’s still more money than the city took in before the parking lease.

Complaints about parking “are par for the course in parking. It is the easiest thing to beat up on.”

No date is set for Cincinnati City Council’s vote. Leasing of the garages and parking lots is on the planning commission’s March 1 agenda. The commission will vote to recommend the deal, or not, to council.